Preface

Preface

The ship bounced from the limbs of one monstrous wave to another. The violent rising and falling of our bodies against the metal floor made it impossible to think. All we felt was the aching of our sore muscles, the bile threatening to erupt from the depth of our stomach and the soul chilling air in the ship’s hold.

There were at least a hundred men, women, and children traveling with us. All drenched in sickness and misery. It had been two days since we had access to water and three since our last meal. It had been ten days since we started sailing.

I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. My nose had got accustomed to the stench of body fluids of all kinds; taking a deep breath no longer resulted in gaging and vomiting. My head leaped from one shoulder to another with a force that was certain to hurt my neck or even break it, but I no longer had the will to stop it.

Consciousness started flickering and mixing with images of blood flowing like rivers through the eilift fields. The cricking sound of our transport fighting the raging storm mixed with the growls of the fenrirs salivating to rip the flesh of the human sacrifices. I opened my eyes and looked around me in terror, but the beasts were not there. They were waiting for us at the end of our journey.

It was so easy to doze off, to let exhaustion take over my body. But there was no rest. My mind was plagued by nightmares. I had the memories of a monster stuck on the part of the brain where dreams used to live. So much violence, cruelty and pain combining like the ingredients of a deadly poison.

The loud groaned of the iron doors startled me into awareness. I didn’t notice the ship had stopped moving. A group of ten men rushed into the room holding automatic rifles and yelling in a language I didn’t need to understand. We had to move, and we had to move fast. I jumped into standing position and followed the fearful human mass.

The ocean breeze in the dock cleansed my desensitized nostril. We were finally in land. There were no stars, no moon, not even the electric aura of a city in the distance. We were disembarking in a shore where civilization and human kindness had given up the battle many centuries ago.

The armed men kept shouting even though they knew most of us couldn’t understand their language. It sounded like Russian, but it could have been Croatian or Turkish; at the end, it didn’t matter. We knew we were cattle leading to the slaughterhouse, we didn’t need a translation.

At the end of the dock, there were three figures standing tall under an industrial halogen lamp. Their silhouettes were unmistakable; Roman, Norhan and Raine.

I looked at my comrades for confirmation. Their subtle but committed nods didn’t hide the fear in their eyes. I took a deep breath. It was all on me. Time to write the final chapter of my this prophecy.